Billionaire wants to apply digital revolution to judicial system

June 3, 2014

Updated June 5, 2014 7:51 a.m.

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Patrick Soon-Shiong, one of the wealthiest men in Los Angeles, is teaming up with UCI's School of Law in hopes of revolutionizing the judicial system. Shown above in front of a white board that explains what is happening with the health care system. COURTESY OF NANTWORK

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Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who with a worth of $10 billion ranks No. 130 on Forbes' list of wealthiest humans, recently made headlines for taking Bill Gates' and Warren Buffet's Giving Pledge. Translation: He has promised to give away half of his fortune before he dies. COURTESY OF NANTWORK

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Patrick Soon-Shiong speaks after being presented with the Public Service award during UCI Law School's Public Service Awards Dinner. Soon-Shiong is concerned about the foster care system. “The statistic is horrific,” Soon-Shiong said in a phone interview. “Foster kids on average go through six or seven homes in their lifetime. From court to court and home to home. At the age of 18, they're thrown into the street.” MIGUEL VASCONCELLOS, UCI

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Former state Sen. Joe Dunn introduces Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong during UCI Law School's Public Service Awards Dinner. About eight years ago, Soon-Shiong sat down with Dunn, who had just been appointed the CEO of the California Medical Association. Soon-Shiong wanted to discuss his plans to build a national nonprofit medical database, a sort of information superhighway for healthcare. MIGUEL VASCONCELLOS, UCI

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Patrick Soon-Shiong is presented with the Public Service award by UCI Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky during the school's Public Service Awards Dinner. MIGUEL VASCONCELLOS, COURTESY OF UCI

Patrick Soon-Shiong, one of the wealthiest men in Los Angeles, is teaming up with UCI's School of Law in hopes of revolutionizing the judicial system. Shown above in front of a white board that explains what is happening with the health care system. COURTESY OF NANTWORK

The wealthiest man in Los Angeles is looking to team up with UC Irvine’s School of Law in hopes of transforming the country’s judicial system.

Patrick Soon-Shiong was on campus recently to receive Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s annual Public Service Award.

Soon-Shiong, whose $10 billion net worth puts him at No. 130 on Forbes’ list of wealthiest humans, made headlines recently for taking the same “giving pledge” made by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Translation: He has promised to give away at last half of his fortune before he dies.

And one of the latest things Soon-Shiong has expressed interest in spending some of his money on is improving how the courts manage foster children.

First: The backstory.

About eight years ago, Soon-Shiong sat down with former state Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Santa Ana, who at the time had just been appointed chief executive at the California Medical Association. Soon-Shiong wanted to discuss his plans to build a national nonprofit medical database, a sort of information superhighway for health care.

The idea was to help those in the medical world communicate with each other and share information, including patient DNA. It would connect doctors for purposes of clinical trials and treatment.

Today, that health care sugerhighway is under construction; a handful of hospitals are involved in the pilot program.

A few years ago, Soon-Shiong went back to Dunn, who was by then the executive director of the California State Bar.

“I think there’s another place that needs a grid,” Dunn said Soon-Shiong told him. Over lunch, he explained how he wanted to create a judicial database in the vein of the health care superhighway.

The legal world has many neighborhoods: prosecutors, defenders, social services, law enforcement. Often, the people in one neighborhood don’t know what the people in the other ’hood are up to.

In particular, Soon-Shiong is concerned about the foster care system.

“The statistic is horrific,” Soon-Shiong said in a phone interview. “Foster kids, on average, go through seven homes in their lifetime. From court to court and home to home. (Then), at the age of 18, they’re thrown into the street.”

It’s unclear what connection, if any, Soon-Shiong has to the foster care system. An assistant said only “it’s just a passion of his,” but declined to elaborate.

Still, a bigger question remains: How would digital information help change foster care?

For one thing, the judicial system does not have access to databases that track foster care homes.

“They don’t know if someone in a home is a sexual predator,” Dunn says. “There’s no way for all of them to connect. If we want to solve social problems, one way to do it is to share the data.”

Dunn told Soon-Shiong he had an idea: “I need to introduce you to Erwin Chemerinsky.”

Chemerinsky is the founding dean of UCI’s School of Law. To describe him, Dunn invokes some other big names.

“There are a lot of very talented professionals that in their field are superstars,” Dunn says. “There are very few who are able to rise above their own specialty and see how their specialty interacts with other specialties.”

A classic example, Dunn says, is Steve Jobs.

“He merged art and technology.”

Another example: Patrick Soon-Shiong.

“He took his knowledge in medicine and merged it with technology as a way of affecting the world at large.”

Dunn puts Dean Chemerinsky in the same company.

“While he is one of the greatest scholars of constitutional law, he has the rare ability to see how law is super-connected to so many other disciplines in life; to improve society at large,” Dunn says.

A meeting was set. The three men gathered in an office building in Costa Mesa that was at the time owned by Soon-Shiong. He and Chemerinsky brainstormed on a massive whiteboard.

“In all honesty, this was a great joy to sit and watch these brilliant individuals merge their lives in a way that, frankly, if done, will have a massively positive benefit,” Dunn says. “They filled every space on that whiteboard.”

The mind meld led to an idea to create a judicial innovation institutewhere data could be aggregated and then researched to develop public policy proposals, starting with the foster care system.

“I wanted to explore with UCI law school a way to create an environment ... to solve some of these issues that plague ... a whole generation of these children,” Soon-Shiong says.

Chemerinsky was impressed with Soon-Shiong and his goals.

“Wouldn’t it be great to create a think tank that would do cutting edge research on how to improve the administration of the courts?” Chemerinsky asks.

Soon-Shiong said an initial vision to do just that, to establish such an organization in Costa Mesa, “didn’t pan out.”

Discussions, however, are continuing.

“With Joe’s help and Erwin’s help, I’m sure this can be done,” Soon-Shiong told the crowd gathered to honor him May 16 for his contributions to UCI. “There is an opportunity for us to really make a difference ... And, most importantly, create collaboration.”

Dunn said they are in “wait mode.”

“A number of factors need to come together to make this a possibility,” says Dunn. “We are hopeful that the future will bring the creation of a judicial institute.”

It is a departure for Soon-Shiong, who typically pours his money into health care. He and his wife Michele gave $100 million to rescue the beleaguered Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital in South Los Angeles, $135 million to St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica and $4 million last fall to the University of California’s Global Health Initiative.

A surgeon by trade, Soon-Shiong made his fortune developing drugs and surgical procedures for diabetics, as well as a medication-delivery system for cancer patients.

But a justice institute is in keeping with his theme of establishing “programs, rather than buildings.”

Soon-Shiong’s foundation motto: “It’s not a handout, it’s a hand in.”

“I really mean that,” he says. “It’s very important to create systems that are sustainable.”

Soon-Shiong, now 62 and a father of two, was born to a Chinese village doctor in apartheid South Africa. It was a world, he says, “where people were poor and people were underdogs and underserved.”

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